The Talking Cure
by Mara Greengrass
Summary: In the aftermath of a crisis, Jack and Daniel talk to Janet about friendship, SG-1, and what pisses them off.


TITLE: The Talking Cure  
  
AUTHOR: Mara Greengrass  
  
AUTHOR'S E-MAIL: fishfolk@ix.netcom.com. Feedback is better than chocolate.  
  
PERMISSION TO ARCHIVE: Heliopolis, Gateworld, yes. Others, just ask.  
  
CATEGORY: Gen/friendship, if I have to pick a category.  
  
RATINGS/WARNINGS: G  
  
SUMMARY: In the aftermath of a crisis, Jack and Daniel talk to Janet about friendship, SG-1, and what pisses them off.  
  
CONTINUITY: Undetermined, but certainly after season 3.  
  
DISCLAIMER: Stargate SG-1 and its characters are the property of Showtime/Viacom, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Productions. I'm making absolutely no money from this.  
  
NOTES: Avi provided one crucial insight that made this vignette possible, Josephine pointed out flaws in the first draft, and Captain Average and Adastra did the beta. Oh, and I've probably taken a few minor liberties with the layout of the infirmary, but I hope you'll forgive me for that, as well as my paraphrase of a Douglas Adams joke.   
  
* * * * *  
  
When Daniel arrived in the infirmary, bloody and only half-conscious, Janet shooed Jack into her auxiliary examining room and told him to stay put. The colonel's minor injuries gave her a perfect excuse to make him stay, yet his tendency to hover over his team forced her to keep him out of the way.  
  
Deb, the nurse on duty, began sponging off Daniel's wounds, and a glance told Janet they were superficial. Sighing in relief, she started to examine him for more serious injuries.  
  
"I'm okay," he mumbled, trying to pull away.  
  
"You're obviously using some definition of the word 'okay' with which I'm not familiar." Janet bent over and held his shoulders. "You're in the infirmary, Daniel, and you're not leaving here until we've cleaned you up and checked you over. So unless you'd like your turn in the enema line, you can stay still."  
  
When he rested his head back on the pillow, Janet nodded to Deb to go back to cleaning. Keeping an eye on him as she worked, Janet saw his eyelids fluttering as he drifted back to full consciousness. Her ministrations to one deep gash completed the process as he gritted his teeth to stifle a yelp.  
  
Finally, with the work nearly completed, Janet signaled to Deb that she should leave. "All done, Daniel."  
  
A careful deep breath. "Good."  
  
"So, how do you feel?"  
  
"Oh, you know how it is. I've been better." Guileless blue eyes peered up at her.  
  
"I'm sure you have. So, do you want to tell me about it?"  
  
"Not really, no." He looked away, and she resisted the urge to rub his forehead the way she did for Cassie when she wasn't feeling well.  
  
"Well, Col. O'Neill was pretty worried about you when he brought you in."  
  
An anxious and wrinkled brow turned back toward her. "He's okay, right?"  
  
"He's fine."  
  
* * * * *  
  
The room Jack was in had originally been a supply closet and it still held boxes of sutures and hypothermia blankets, but Janet preferred to have at least one separate space for examinations when she chose. After all, years of working underground had inured them all to claustrophobia, but sometimes the lack of privacy was a problem.  
  
When she opened the door, Jack was still holding a gauze pad over the slice across his right bicep, although she suspected he'd forgotten about it. He sat up straight on the examination table when she came in, eyes narrowing at the sight of the equipment tray in her hand.  
  
"Y'know, instead of taking a few more gallons of blood out of me for post-mission tests, shouldn't you be putting some back into Daniel?"  
  
He probably thought he was being subtle, but it would have taken a blind woman to miss the way his shoulders tensed as he spoke. Or how his voice deepened.  
  
"I made certain of Dr. Jackson's health before I came in here. You got him back in plenty of time and he'll be up and around, and spending too many hours huddled over stone tablets, in no time."  
  
"That's good to hear." The muscles slowly relaxed again.  
  
Janet pulled the gauze off his wound, considered it critically, and decided it didn't need stitches, so she bandaged it quickly and began the post-mission examination.   
  
Poking, prodding, she finished up by flashing her penlight into his eyes, repressing a smile at his low growl.  
  
"Why do you do that?" he asked. "I mean, other than the obvious reason that it pisses me off."  
  
"Oh, Colonel, that's just a happy fringe benefit."  
  
"I figured."  
  
As she went through the familiar motions, Janet considered her next move and whether it would be helpful--but sometimes a doctor had to follow her intuition. She turned away and bent over her notes.  
  
"Daniel means a lot to you, doesn't he?"  
  
The tension in the small room shot up and she continued to write, pretending to ignore him. An itch crawled up her spine and she signed the page with a flourish, turning to face Jack.  
  
His face was utterly blank, which made her sigh; this sort of thing was so much easier with women. "He means a lot to you. You've worked together, saved each other's lives, been to Hell together..."  
  
As she'd hoped, the joke worked and Jack's blank face cracked into a small version of his normal grin. "Yeah, Chez Hell was quite the experience."  
  
His eyes went distant and Janet returned to shuffling papers, trying to decide if she needed to prod again.  
  
"Danny's a good guy," Jack said finally.  
  
She stayed very still, watching Jack's profile out of the corner of her eye. His jaw was tight, but he took a deep breath and scrubbed at his forehead with the heel of his hand. "A good guy."  
  
* * * * *  
  
"He's a good leader," Daniel said, his voice just a bit hoarse. As always, he looked boyish lying on the bed--when his height and musculature weren't quite so apparent--but the illusion of youth was tarnished by the patchwork of bandages and stitches.  
  
"Mmm," Janet murmured as she pretended to check his pulse. Daniel hardly needed any prompting at all, she just needed to stay out of his way and let him talk.  
  
"I really didn't think we'd make it out this time, but Jack managed it."  
  
Janet nodded, but Daniel wasn't even looking at her.  
  
"It was my fault, you know."  
  
* * * * *  
  
"It's my fault he got hurt." Jack's eyes were still distant, but his tone had taken on a familiar self-loathing.  
  
"Why do you think that?"  
  
He glanced at her and she kept up the professional poker face until he looked away. Adjusting something on the table, she bent over it to escape the intelligence in his eyes.  
  
"Daniel warned me. Like he always does. He knew there was something fishy with those bastards. And instead of listening, I nearly got him killed. They were..."  
  
His voice trailed off and she looked up, catching her breath at the cold anger he exuded, from every taut muscle to the blankness of his expression. She wondered what he'd done to the people who were hurting a member of his team, then remembered what Daniel had looked like--she didn't really care what he'd done.  
  
But it remained her job to help him deal with what had happened. "You brought him back," she said, her voice firm and professional.  
  
The professional soldier face melted back into Jack worrying about Daniel. "I know. I just should have listened when he said something was wrong."  
  
* * * * *  
  
"I should have listened to him. I knew something was wrong, but I had to go digging. I had to take the chance."  
  
She waited. "And?"  
  
"And he came to save me. It's embarrassing, you know." He tried to laugh, but the wince showed how painful it was. Doing a little quick math, she decided he could handle a bit more pain medication and went to the medicine cabinet.   
  
She handed him a small blue pill, and he swallowed the offering gratefully with a careful sip of water, trying to avoid his split lip. Busying herself with a piece of beeping equipment, she sent a mental apology to the orderly who'd have to reset everything she was currently adjusting in order to look occupied.  
  
When the lines around his eyes and mouth had eased slightly, she said, "I'm sure Col. O'Neill wouldn't want you to be embarrassed."  
  
"It's how he always ends up in danger while rescuing me. I don't know what I'd do if something went wrong."  
  
* * * * *  
  
"If something happened to him because I was just too damn stubborn..." Jack looked down. Following his gaze, Janet saw that his hands were nearly white where they grasped the edge of the examination table. As she watched, he slowly loosened his grip, rubbing his hands together absently.  
  
"What is it?" she asked quietly. "What if something happened?"  
  
Jack shook his head. "I don't know."  
  
* * * * *  
  
Daniel closed his eyes. "I don't know how we'd cope without him. He pisses us off, holds the team together, makes us think...did I mention pisses us off?"  
  
"It came up," Janet said solemnly.  
  
"Yeah." He grinned, hissing as it drew on several cuts on his face. "When I first met him, that damn trip to Abydos, he was everything I ever hated about the military."  
  
* * * * *  
  
"To begin with, he was a total academic scientist. All he needed was a damn propeller beanie to be the complete geek. He pissed me off."  
  
Janet smiled, her own memories of the early days of SG-1 mainly involving Jack and Daniel glaring at each other. "What changed?"  
  
"Either he wised up or I did. Maybe both." Jack looked at her, a knowing expression with a bit of a smirk showing that he knew what she was doing. "He's my friend."  
  
* * * * *  
  
"But now I've come to respect him, his courage, his loyalty. Jack's my friend. But more than that, he's my reality check. I get...caught up sometimes. Jack grounds me."  
  
* * * * *  
  
"He's kind of my conscience, too. Never hesitates to tell me when I've screwed up or when I'm *about* to screw up. My conscience, even if I don't always listen to him."  
  
* * * * *  
  
"He's kept me sane. Brought me back from the edge too many times to count. When I was addicted to the sarcophagus, when that Goa'uld pleasure palace nearly made me jump off my balcony, when Hathor..."   
  
Daniel closed his eyes and just breathed for a few moments, and Janet leaned against the nearest examination table, content to wait. She cursed silently to see his usually mobile face so still, as he tried to avoid jarring any of his injuries.  
  
"He's always been there for me."   
  
* * * * *  
  
"He reminds me of all the things I want to ignore. And the damn thing is how many times he's found another solution. My job's been to make 'em work."  
  
"And you have."  
  
"Not always." Jack was a bit pale. "I've screwed up big time. Things I won't be able to forget having done." Jack studied his hands intently, then looked up. "I'm okay, Doc. It just hits me sometimes, afterward."  
  
"What definition of 'okay' are you using?"  
  
He chuckled, his face crinkling as the lines of tension eased out again. "How much extra psychiatry training did they make you do, anyway?"  
  
"Enough."  
  
"Yeah, I suppose so." He hopped off the table. "We done here?"  
  
"If you're done."  
  
"You bet. I wanna go check on Daniel."  
  
* * * * *  
  
Daniel opened his eyes. "How's Jack doing, anyway? I'm surprised he's not hanging around, giving you a hard time."  
  
"I banished him to the supply closet to wait for me."  
  
That earned a small snicker. "Whoops."  
  
"I'm sure he'll be less than pleased when I get to him."  
  
"Hey, I think he's a little scared of you." A careful chuckle.  
  
Janet grinned at him. "Good, he should be."  
  
"Go check on him." Daniel waved a vague hand. "I'm feeling better. Really. The painkillers are kicking in."  
  
* * * * *  
  
Janet stepped into the main infirmary just behind Jack and saw his shoulders tense up at the sight of Daniel lying in the bed, eyes closed. For a moment, she studied the linguist through the eyes of a friend, not a doctor, finding weariness and a bit of pain around the eyes, and a whole hell of a lot of superficial but undoubtedly painful lacerations and contusions.  
  
Daniel opened his eyes. "Hey, Jack."  
  
"Yo, Daniel. Good to see you among the living."  
  
"Good to *be* among the living. So, are you heading home?"  
  
"Nah, Doc says I've gotta hang around overnight, so I thought I'd come bug you for a while."  
  
"You're all heart."  
  
Jack dropped into the chair next to Daniel's bed and Janet stepped away, leaving them to their conversation.  
  
As she sat down at the desk to write up her final notes, she kept an eye on the two men, the academic and the soldier.   
  
"So, you know if you keep getting hurt, the Doc's gonna finally follow through on her threat, right?" Jack asked, picking up a rolled ball of gauze from a nearby table and tossing it absentmindedly from hand to hand.   
  
A faint grin ghosted across Daniel's face as he watched the familiar sight of Jack unable to stay still. "Which threat was that? Tying me to a chair?"  
  
"Hey, I don't want to know about that!" Jack waved his hands around, dropping the gauze.  
  
"Jack..."  
  
"Okay, okay." Jack picked up the gauze from the floor, snagged a pill bottle, and started juggling both. "I mean the threat to create the Daniel Jackson Memorial Bed. Plaque and all."  
  
"Mm-hmm. Right next to the Jack O'Neill Bed. Shall we compare scars?"  
  
Janet ducked her head to hide a pleased smile. They would take care of each other, these two, now that she'd given them a little push. They'd even talk about what was bothering them. Even if it was only in a roundabout and oh-so-manly way.  
  
"Ha!" Jack said, dropping the bottle. "My scars are bigger than yours." 


End file.
